Unmasked M.D.

A stinging malpractice verdict

In May 1978, Takuye Green, 54, was facing a coronary bypass operation at Lutheran Hospital of Milwaukee. Her husband Hoyle remembers being reassured when they were told that a top visiting Air Force officer, Dr. William Stanford, would be assisting. Stanford was responsible for hooking her up to a heart-lung machine; somehow the connection was made backward. For 15 minutes no one noticed, and instead of pumping oxygenated blood into Green, the machine drained blood out of her aorta. The resulting brain damage has left her a speechless quadriplegic living on liquid protein. (And she could live that way for 20 years because her heart surgery was successful.) The Greens sued for malpractice, and the chief surgeon on the case settled for $575,000. But the Government, which represented Colonel Stanford, fought the suit tenaciously. That was a mistake.

At the trial, witnesses described not only the tragedy but an apparent cover-up of earlier questions about Stanford's competence. Last week a federal judge angrily socked the Government with one of the largest personal-injury verdicts Uncle Sam has ever suffered: $1.8 million.

Stanford, 49, was chief of cardiac surgery at the Lackland Air Force Base medical center near San Antonio. The military hospital has a good reputation, and so did the University of Iowa-trained surgeon when he arrived there in 1965. In 1977, however, Dr. Gary Akins, a subordinate, began wondering about Stanford's abilities. He studied an 18-month period and found that 43% of Stanford's patients, 17 in all, had died during or shortly after their operations; the hospital average was 6%. Akins says his study was sent to Stanford's boss, General Paul Myers. Myers did not publicize the report, but the word was out in the hospital corridors.

Soon two anesthesiologists refused to assist Stanford because of the fatality rate. Says Anesthesiologist Tommy Polk: "If you do seven of them, and none come off the table--survive the operation--it becomes very depressing." Other complaints began reaching Myers. "Certainly serious doubts were raised in my mind," he admitted at the trial. But he seems to have done little about the situation. The defense argued that Stanford's high mortality rate reflected the fact that he took on the most serious cases, but one supporter acknowledged, "I wouldn't refer a member of my family to him." A 1978 Air Force evaluation did find Stanford fully qualified, but two Air Force officers now say that their signatures on the report were forged. For all the claims and counterclaims, no word of warning was sent to Milwaukee when Stanford was assigned there by Myers to advance his training. No one asked, says Myers.

In his stinging 24-page opinion, Judge Terence Evans said: "He was rough, sometimes careless. He did not possess good medical judgment." The Air Force transfer from Lackland to Milwaukee, the judge suspected, was a way "to get Dr. Stanford off its hands for a while to prohibit scandal and further dissension among the doctors." The $1.8 million award must be paid by the Government under existing law. As for Stanford, he has retired from the military and practices at the highly rated Miami Heart Institute. Myers is now surgeon general of the Air Force, its top-ranking medical officer.

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